In 2011, the scorecard shows we civilians have not done very well in protecting the nation that so many thousands died to defend. The borders remain largely open, allowing hostile persons to enter at will, [...]]]> Patriotic holidays always lead me to reflect on the sacrifices made by members of our armed forces to protect American freedoms.

In 2011, the scorecard shows we civilians have not done very well in protecting the nation that so many thousands died to defend. The borders remain largely open, allowing hostile persons to enter at will, from unfriendly Muslims to Mexican organized crime. Our elected representatives can’t begin to stop spending money we don’t have, even after the Tea Party electoral success in 2010. One example: spending grew by $145 billion in fiscal 2011 compared to a year earlier, according to the CBO. America’s future looks dicey at best, given the financial irresponsibility of Washington on the most basic task it performs, that of taxing and spending.

But to be fair to Tea Party efforts at reform, immigration is the ground-zero issue showing how little control we citizens have to effect a government increasingly run more by globalist ideology and money than allegiance to US sovereignty. The American people have insisted for years that immigration be legal, controlled and reduced, with no substantial change. The reason is that the enemies of American sovereignty are very powerful.

Still, without reformist efforts, the border would certainly be entirely open by now in some sort of North American Union, and tens of millions of lawbreakers would be on the famous “path to citizenship” so beloved by the post-sovereignty bunch.

Patriotic holidays are therefore an appropriate occasion to rededicate oneself to saving the country, because it needs all the help it can get. And soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have showed the real cost of preserving freedom.

However, the events celebrating the new technology are disappointing because they further the myth that the great icon symbolizes a welcome mat for immigrants. Movie star Sigourney Weaver will [...]]]> I love webcams, so the idea of cams to be set up next week on the Statue of Liberty’s torch to view New York Harbor sounds great.

However, the events celebrating the new technology are disappointing because they further the myth that the great icon symbolizes a welcome mat for immigrants. Movie star Sigourney Weaver will Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” (“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses,” etc.) and a naturalization ceremony for 125 new citizens from more than 40 countries.

It would be more appropriate to review the true history of the statue named “Liberty Enlightening the World” — that it was a gift from the French recognizing America’s success at representative government. Sculptor Frederick Bartholdi hoped his statue would be an inspiration for other peoples to throw off the chains of oppression and institute their own governments that would permit freedom.

Let me say again that the plaque with the offensive poem should be banished to a distant storage locker. (See my 2009 blog Jackhammer Out That Annoying Poem Attached to Lady Liberty? Yes!)

The correct number of immigrants for today is ZERO. We have plenty of people now and immigration to America should not be seen as a universal human right, as many leftists believe. We are beyond full up from an environmental perspective and do not need additional millions of excess workers in a failing economy. National security is endangered by the willy-nilly admittance of practically anyone, including terrorist-society residents. So celebrating diverse immigration is simply not appropriate for current reality.

Torch cams to give masses views from Lady Liberty, Associated Press, October 23, 2011

Give me your tired, your poor — your Internet-connected masses yearning to see.

Lady Liberty is getting high-tech gifts for her 125th birthday: webcams on her torch that will let viewers gaze out at New York Harbor and read the tablet in her hands or see visitors on the grounds of the island below in real time.

The five torch cams are to be switched on Friday during a ceremony to commemorate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on Oct. 28, 1886. The ceremony caps a week of events centered around the historic date, including the debut of a major museum exhibition about poet Emma Lazarus, who helped bring the monument renown as the “Mother of Exiles.”

The statue’s webcams will offer views from the torch that have been unavailable to the public since 1916, said Stephen A. Briganti, the president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc.

“The statue is the most famous symbol in the world,” he said. “Most of the people in the world have seen it, but they have not seen it like this. It will be a visit that so many people, including New Yorkers, have never taken before.”

Through the webcams, Internet users around the world will have four views, including a high-quality, 180-degree stitched panorama of the harbor with stunning views of Ellis and Governors islands. They will be able to watch as ships go by Liberty Island and observe as the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center goes up floor-by-floor in lower Manhattan. They can get a fish-eye look at the torch itself as it glows in the night.

The five cameras, which will be on 24 hours, seven days a week, were donated to the National Park Service by Earthcam Inc., a New Jersey-based company that manages webcams around the world.

The cameras put viewers on the balcony of the torch and high above the crown, said Brian Cury, the founder of Earthcam.

“This is not your dad’s picture of the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “This is not a view from a tourist helicopter. This is unique.”

Friday’s ceremony also will be marked by a water flotilla, actress Sigourney Weaver reading Lazarus’ poem and a naturalization ceremony for 125 candidates for citizenship representing over 40 countries.

The public is invited to attend the ceremony, with ferry service available between Manhattan and Liberty Island. The interior of the statue — from the pedestal down to the museum base — will close after the 125th celebration for up to a year so that stairwells, elevators and mechanical systems can be upgraded. The park itself will remain open to visitors.

The statue, designed by sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, was given by the French government to the U.S. as a token of friendship between the two countries and dedicated by President Grover Cleveland.

And while today it is known as a symbol of liberty for millions of refugees and exiles, initially the famous sonnet by Lazarus in the voice of the statue asking for “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” did not appear on the statue. It was not until 1903 that “The New Colossus” was placed on the pedestal.

Lazarus is the subject of a new exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan, which has views of Lady Liberty. It’s to open Wednesday to coincide with the anniversary of the statue’s dedication.

Curator Melissa Martens said Lazarus was born into the fourth generation of a Jewish family in New York prominent since colonial times. “They were some of the early people to articulate the Jewish experience in dialogue with the challenges of freedom and religious liberty,” she said.

Featuring over 83 original objects from 27 institutions and individuals, “Poet of Exiles” is the first full-fledged artifact exhibit at a major museum to robustly explore the life of Lazarus, from her work as an advocate for immigrants fleeing the Russian pogroms of the early 1880s to her pioneering support for a Jewish homeland.

Lazarus died in 1887 at age 38 from Hodgkin’s disease, never having known her poem would be united with the Statue of Liberty.

Guitars abound! Plus American flags, gymnasts, firemen, kayaks and a marching band.

The Daily Mail provides more details:

Fireworks, [...]]]> I’ve never been a big fan of the song American Pie (with its nonsensical lyrics), but it provides the soundtrack for an exuberant celebration of Grand Rapids by 3000 loyal residents, after the city was dissed by Newsweek magazine.

Guitars abound! Plus American flags, gymnasts, firemen, kayaks and a marching band.

The Daily Mail provides more details:

Fireworks, cheerleaders and kayaks: 3,000 Grand Rapids residents respond to ‘declining city’ charge with epic ‘lip dup’ YouTube music VIDEO, Daily Mail, May 29, 2011

Don’t mess with Grand Rapids.

If you do, the lower Michigan city may fight back with a music video.

Some 3,000 residents of the town, both locally famous and unknown, banded together to make an epic YouTube video – a ‘lip dub’ of lip syncing to Don McLean’s classic song ‘American Pie’ – in response to a negative article.

In January, a post on Newsweek’s website listed Grand Rapids as No. 10 on a list of ‘America’s dying cities’.

The response video is said to have been produced in one unedited take, and it features a colourful cast of characters ambling through downtown Grand Rapids, part of which was blocked off for the taping.

Musicians, both apparently real and pretend, strum guitars, while memorable appearances are made by cheerleaders, a football team, yoga enthusiasts, a wedding party, police and fire vehicles and two squads with water guns.

The video is also said to include local ‘entertainers, political figures media celebrities’.

The lip synching itself ranges from right on to barely intelligible, though most of the physical timing is pretty tight.

In several instances, actions on screen were choreographed with the song’s lyrics.

For example, after the Don McClean tune mentions a pickup truck, two young people are shown riding in the back of a vintage model.

When the song intones ‘the marching band refused to yield’, a full band takes the street in Grand Rapids, decked out in crisp green uniforms and playing their instruments.

Toward the end of the video, as the song said ‘as the flames climb high’, fireworks went off on a nearby bridge.

After that, a helicopter gives a bird’s eye view of the crowds of lip dubbers, while a message written on a lawn reads: ‘Experience Grand Rapids’

The Grand Rapids Press said of the video: ‘If you have lived in Grand Rapids your whole life, or even just arrived, it would be hard to not say that the tiny hairs on your arms don’t stand straight up when you see the shots of the city’s most well known landmarks and the people who make this city so wonderful’.

For their part, Newsweek has distanced itself from the original article.

They posted on their Facebook page: ‘To the Grand Rapids crowd: First off, we LOVE your YouTube LipDub. We’re big fans, and are inspired by your love of the city you call home.

‘But so you know what was up with the list you’re responding to, we want you to know it was done by a website called mainstreet.com–not by Newsweek (it was unfortunately picked up on the Newsweek web site as part of a content sharing deal)–and it uses a methodology that our current editorial team doesn’t endorse and wouldn’t have employed.

‘It certainly doesn’t reflect our view of Grand Rapids’.

It’s an interesting response from an ‘old media’ brand at a time when every other blog is churning out ‘top 10 lists’, usually based solely on the opinion of the editors.

Meanwhile, Michigan does face economic challenges. Number 7 on the Newsweek list, Detroit may be somewhat buoyed by Vice President Joe Biden’s recent assertion that the auto industry is experiencing a comeback, as Chrysler pays off bailout loans early.

Flint, Michigan, number 9 on the list, is another auto town that may be in the same boat.

But both cities still suffer from high unemployment and foreclosure rates.

Census Bureau results show Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula lost two per cent of its residents, as mining and logging jobs continue to decline and young people move out.

The late Captain Paul Tibbets (pictured), who piloted the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, remained unconvinced [...]]]> No American success is safe from BHO’s history rewrite team. Now the event that brought a rapid end to WWII — rather than a bloodbath invasion of Japan — is about to receive the special Obama Sorry treatment.

The late Captain Paul Tibbets (pictured), who piloted the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, remained unconvinced by latter day critics who questioned the weapon’s use:

“I have been convinced that we saved more lives than we took,” he said, referring to both American and Japanese casualties from an invasion of Japan. “It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die.”
Paul W. Tibbets Jr., Pilot of Enola Gay, Dies at 92, New York Times, November 1, 2007

Such common sense doesn’t dent the thick belief system of the President, however.

Son of Pilot Who Dropped A-Bomb Opposes Plan to Send U.S. Delegation to Hiroshima Ceremony, Fox News, August 4, 2010

The son of the U.S. Air Force pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare says the Obama administration’s decision to send a U.S. delegation to a ceremony in Japan to mark the 65th anniversary of the attack on Hiroshima is an “unsaid apology” and appears to be an attempt to “rewrite history.”

James Tibbets, son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., says Friday’s visit to Hiroshima by U.S. Ambassador John Roos is an act of contrition that his late father would never have approved.

“It’s an unsaid apology,” Tibbets, 66, told FoxNews.com from his home in Georgiana, Ala. “Why wouldn’t it be?  Why would [Roos] go? It doesn’t make any sense.

“I know it’s the anniversary, but I don’t know what the hell they’re trying to do. It needs to be left alone. The war is over.”

Tibbets, whose father died in 2007 at the age of 92, said he receives dozens of calls from veterans every year around this time thanking him for his father’s service.

“‘If it wasn’t for your dad, I wouldn’t be here,’” Tibbets said many veterans tell him. “This has been going on since he dropped that bomb.”

Tibbets said he sees Roos’ impending visit — it will be the first time the U.S. has sent a delegation to the anniversary commemoration in Hiroshima — as an attempt to revise history.

“It’s making the Japanese look like they’re the poor people, like they didn’t do anything,” he said. “They hit Pearl Harbor, they struck us. We didn’t slaughter the Japanese — we stopped the war.”

Roughly 140,000 people were killed or died within months after an American B-29 — nicknamed the Enola Gay — bombed Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later, roughly 80,000 people died when the U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki.  Japan surrendered nine days later, bringing an end to World War II.

White House officials on Wednesday referred calls to the State Department, which did not  respond to several inquiries about how the decision was made or if national veterans organizations were contacted prior to the announcement that a delegation would attend the commemoration.

During Wednesday’s daily press briefing, State Department officials defended the visit, saying Roos’ attendance at the ceremony “was the right thing to do,” spokesman PJ Crowley said.

The ceremony will begin early Friday with the ringing of a bell and the release of doves. Roos visited Hiroshima weeks after he arrived in Tokyo as a U.S. ambassador last year, and the response was generally positive. […]

President Obama is expected to visit Japan in November, and calls have been growing there for him to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, since he has spoken of his vision of a nuclear-free world.

Tibbets said he hopes Obama will decide to forgo visiting to the two cities.

“What’s his purpose? I don’t know what it’d do,” Tibbet said. “History is history, the past is the past. You can’t change it and I don’t know why he’d visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“This all sounds like, ‘Oh, we did you wrong.’ That’s what it sounds like.”

Back then, American military leaders didn’t have to mince words or worry about offending Muslims. (Unlike these twisted times, [...]]]> On June 6, 1944, Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a message to the Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force about what they faced in the invasion of Normandy and their prospects for victory.

Back then, American military leaders didn’t have to mince words or worry about offending Muslims. (Unlike these twisted times, when General George Casey said regarding the Fort Hood massacre of 13 soldiers that “if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” And he kept his job.)

I still hope that we can fight our way back to sanity from the upside-down world of appeasement toward our enemies, which is why I listen to General Eisenhower’s D-Day remarks every year.

D-Day Message Text